


Draco Malfoy and the Secret Underground Vampire Bureaucracy

by Lomonaaeren



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bondage, Bonding, Humor, M/M, Romance, Self-help, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-03
Updated: 2013-06-03
Packaged: 2017-12-13 19:53:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/828201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which there is an obsessed Potter, conspiracy theories, bonds, hormones, far too much self-help, and, of course, a secret underground vampire bureaucracy. None of which is as important as the fact that this is not Draco Malfoy’s fault.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Draco Malfoy and the Secret Underground Vampire Bureaucracy

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2008 round of hd_holidays, for beren_writes. The requested kinks used were bonding, bondage, and vampires.
> 
> Thank you to my betas: byaghro, ravenqueen55, raphsody606, msarden, and angylsmuse

Draco sighed.  
  
The _person_ whom this horrid place took the liberty of calling a welcome witch didn’t look up.  
  
Draco shifted and sighed again.  
  
This time, he attracted the attention he wanted; the witch glanced at him. Her polite, uncommunicative smile showed no teeth and remained the same as it had been five minutes ago, and a half-hour before that, and an hour before that. “Yes, Mr. Malfoy?”  
  
“ _Look_ , Bones,” Draco said, deciding that he might as well abandon the courtesy he’d used so far, because it hadn’t got him any better results. He and Susan Bones had known each other vaguely in school, though she had vanished over the summer before Hogwarts reopened, and most people had believed she was dead or had left the country. Now Draco knew it to be the former, and they shared the same predicament, so she ought to offer more apologies than she had so far. “I just want to know how much longer I’ll have to wait before I see this Zabrina Gloriosa or whatever the fuck her name is. It’s a ridiculous name, by the way.”  
  
Bones narrowed her eyes, and stood up. “Strange thing for someone with a name like Draco Malfoy to say,” she murmured. The sweetness had gone from her voice, and now she showed her fangs, as though she thought they could intimidate him. Draco showed his own back, except that he still wasn’t used to opening his mouth around them and therefore cut his own lip on one of them. He yelped and lifted a hand to his mouth to cover the trickle of blood. Vampire or not, he saw no need to walk around wearing stained robes.  
  
“You don’t understand, Malfoy,” Bones said, sounding amused again. Perhaps his social blunder had restored her confidence—which it _shouldn’t_ have, Draco thought, probing sullenly at his fangs with a careful tongue. He had already spent several days with _that_ cut and talking in a way that had made some of his mother’s carefully-chosen guests ask if he’d recently returned from a foreign holiday. “You’re a vampire now—“  
  
“That was sort of hard to miss, Bones,” Draco snarled around his hand.  
  
“And that means that you’re exactly the same as any other new vampire who comes into contact with the bureaucracy,” Bones said, and shrugged, and sat back down. She looked paler than she had been, but otherwise not substantially different. Vampirism, Draco had already learned, was least hard on the looks of those people who had been blonds or redheads before they died. “You don’t have any special privileges. You’ve yet to show us that you can behave around humans and recognize your new status in the wizarding world. We don’t know much about what talents and special needs you might have gained from your sire—because we don’t know _who_ bit you, and for what reason—and we need to research that. All of this takes time and questioning. I’m surprised you haven’t realized that sitting out here patiently, and not demanding to see Madam Gloriosa just because you’re a pampered, spoiled child, is a test of its own. One that you’ve resoundingly failed. I’m only telling you that because I feel sorry for you, by the way. This is so obviously not your world.”  
  
“I doubt that you know much more about it than I do,” Draco said. He took his hand cautiously away from his mouth. The blood had stopped flowing, he noted in relief. One of the few benefits of his new status was that his blood _did_ clot quickly, as he couldn’t afford to lose that much of what kept him alive. “Since I didn’t notice you biting that many necks before last summer.”  
  
Bones smiled a little. “I prefer wrists, actually.”  
  
Draco shuddered. The Vampire Association for the Management and Protection of the Species was supposedly keeping him under severe restrictions, making him drink animal blood until they could find out what kind of human volunteer would be best for him to bite, but of course his mother had taken to drawing her own blood out in vials and sharing it with him. Draco would have expected no less of her. He had found, nevertheless, that his gaze always went to her neck first.  
  
“I couldn’t survive drinking out of wrists,” he said.  
  
“You might have to,” Bones said, and flipped through another pile of parchment on her desk, humming under her breath, “depending on what kind of sire you had.”  
  
Draco shook his head. “I don’t understand that at all—“  
  
Bones murmured something that sounded suspiciously like, “Of course not.” Draco chose to graciously ignore this.  
  
“How can it matter what vampire bit me? I mean, any vampire can make any other kind of vampire, right?”  
  
Bones shook her head at him. “Of course not. Do human parents always have the same kind of children? There are certain traits, sometimes to do with special talents, sometimes with the kind of blood you can drink and the kind of people it’s best to feed from, that get passed down from sire or dam to Risen One.” Draco made a face. He hated V.A.M.P.S’s term for new vampires. It made him sound like some sort of phoenix. “It’s not an exact transference; it combines with the talents and weaknesses you already have. But that just leads to the need for more careful research. I’ve known several Risen Ones who were susceptible to certain kinds of blood diseases, for example, because they weren’t healthy in life and their sires or dams hadn’t been careful enough about which humans they fed from. They had to be _very_ careful that they weren’t drinking from someone with that particular kind of blood disease. It could kill them.”  
  
“I wasn’t sickly,” Draco muttered.  
  
Bones just shrugged, and went back to her paperwork. After a short time of standing in front of her desk like an idiot, Draco decided he should sit down. He did, though he still grumbled under his breath just in case Bones thought she had got away with cowing him. He didn’t like how smoothly she managed to ignore him.  
  
Another hour of silence passed, and then the ivory clock that hung above Draco, the only ornament on the bare stone walls, chimed twice. Bones glanced up at it, smiled, and said, “Madam Gloriosa will see you now.”  
  
Draco tried to give her a menacing scowl as he stood and strode around Bones’s desk towards the door behind it. She only flashed him her fangs in answer.  
  
Draco frowned. He hadn’t yet figured out when vampires had a mocking edge to their smiles, given that they had an edge from their teeth more or less all the time.  
  
*  
  
“But he must have gone _somewhere_.”  
  
“I’m with Hermione by now, mate,” Ron said, poking a weary head around the book he was holding up in front of him. “I’m sick of hearing you talk about Draco sodding Malfoy. I don’t know where he went. No one does. All I know is that he was missing for a little while, and now he’s back in Britain. That should be enough, shouldn’t it?”  
  
“But—“  
  
“Harry,” Ron groaned, and ducked behind the book once more. Harry scowled at him and folded his arms. He _knew_ he was right, damn it.  
  
 _And you’d think that Ron and Hermione would pay a bit more attention to my intuition after I turned out to be right about what Malfoy was up to in our sixth year, and again about the Hallows_ , he thought, and flopped back in the chair behind him, to show the ceiling his scowl instead.  
  
The flat he, Hermione, and Ron had chosen to share after they left Hogwarts had many good points—it was close to the Ministry, where all three of them were in training to enter the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and it was unexpectedly roomy for the price—but looks were not its strong suit. Patterns of cracks ran along the ceiling. Old burn marks and the stench of lingering spells clung to the walls despite Hermione’s numerous attempts to charm them out. She had Transfigured the carpet completely, but Harry thought a trace of the former lumpy green was apparent around the new blue. Odd noises still echoed through the bedrooms and kitchen at the dead of night. And Harry was convinced there must be a poltergeist, since they always woke up to find water running or an old fire that none of them remembered lighting dwindling down to ashes in the hearth.  
  
Harry tried to distract himself by counting the cracks in the ceiling, or trying to find the picture of Dumbledore’s face that Ron swore was up there, but his mind returned to Malfoy, as it always did. Malfoy had just vanished abruptly a few days after they took their NEWT’s. And then he’d returned to England a month or so later. How could that not be suspicious? Especially since Lucius Malfoy had fled not long after the final battle and his whereabouts remained unknown. _Draco’s_ vanishing probably had something to do with his father, and if only they investigated him more closely, they could probably find one of the few remaining Death Eaters at large.  
  
To Harry’s frustration, though, no one in the Ministry shared his convictions. And Ron and Hermione just accused him of obsession and went on about their ordinary lives.  
Harry wasn’t _obsessed_. He knew he wasn’t. He just wanted all the Death Eaters locked up in Azkaban or dead for their crimes, thank you very much. He didn’t think that was an unreasonable thing to want, given that Fenrir Greyback and a few others had tried to assassinate him during his last year at Hogwarts.  
  
He wanted more than anything to put the whole business of the war behind him and just concentrate on becoming an Auror. His best friends knew that. The Weasleys knew that. Ginny, um, well, she knew that when he explained it to her. Anyone who thought differently was just someone who had read and believed too many of the scurrilous stories that the _Daily Prophet_ kept right on publishing because they made it money.  
  
But he had to tie up the loose ends of the war first. Certain things had to be done, always, before the normal business of life could proceed. He had to take his NEWT’s before he could become an Auror. He had to find some way to explain away his strange reluctance to date Ginny before he would be free to go on and date someone else. And he had to find out where Draco Malfoy had gone before he could be sure that there wasn’t an obvious trail which led to Lucius Malfoy that they were ignoring.  
  
Then he sat up, his breath catching.  
  
“What are you planning, Harry?”  
  
Hermione had just stepped in through the door of the flat, shaking snow off the umbrella she’d enchanted to create a protective shield around her when she had to walk. She’d been to visit her parents again, and Apparating in and out of the Grangers’ house was considered using magic in front of Muggles, because they might have guests over. She gave him a sharp look now, and flicked off a few flakes that had managed to land on her hair.  
  
“Who says I’m planning anything?” Harry asked, trying to look as innocent as Teddy did when Harry picked him up for play dates.  
  
“The expression on your face does.” Hermione hung up her umbrella and set about removing the complicated cast of heavy garments she wore outside every single December day. “You’re not as clever about hiding your emotions as you think you are, you know.”  
  
Harry decided Hermione was wrong. Not just because she _was_ , but because she didn’t seem to know a single thing about Harry’s changed feelings towards Ginny.  
  
“Yeah, well,” he said, leaning back to look at the ceiling again. “Ron was telling me that I ought to give up on finding out what’s wrong with Malfoy. And I reckon he’s right. I mean, the Ministry _did_ investigate it, and they found nothing.”  
  
The words caught in his throat like a hot potato. The Ministry had barely made an _effort_. They had probably come to some understanding with Malfoy’s mother, Harry thought bitterly. Narcissa Malfoy had saved his life, but he knew she had done so because she would do anything to protect her son, and that would certainly include bribing Ministry officials to stop inquiring after him, if she had to.  
  
“Hmmm,” said Hermione, and gave him a skeptical look as she walked past him into the kitchen. A moment later, her disgusted voice drifted out. “Ron, I told you that I’m _not_ going to do all the cooking! Get in here and start dinner the way you were supposed to, already.”  
  
Ron grumbled and moaned and pulled himself away from his book as reluctantly as though he had Hermione’s study habits. Harry shook his head as he watched him depart, and then grinned up at the cracks, thinking that maybe he saw Dumbledore’s face there after all.  
  
He had been trying to persuade his friends to listen to him about Malfoy for so long that he had forgotten he had another option. He had investigated Malfoy’s Death Eater activities on his own three years ago. Why couldn’t he do it again?  
  
And Harry knew just where to start. Certain inquires about Malfoy had passed through the hands of a minor Ministry undersecretary with a crush on him; she had mentioned it when she was trying to impress him into going on a date with her. Harry would use a bit of judicious smiling on her and see what else she might be willing to tell him.  
  
He felt a little strange using his face and scar for something like that, but, well.  
  
 _It’s for the greater good_ , he defended himself. _And not in that twisted way Dumbledore meant it, either. This really is. If Malfoy is innocent, then he shouldn’t have anything to fear from an investigation. And if he’s doing something nefarious, then I should find out, so that the rest of the wizarding world and I can live in peace._  
  
Besides, once he had found out what Malfoy was up to, maybe he could stop _thinking_ about him all the time.  
  
*  
  
“Welcome, Mr. Malfoy. Please sit down.”  
  
Draco froze, staring in disbelief. Almost without realizing it, he had conjured a picture of Madam Gloriosa in his mind as some gypsy witch, with long dark hair and long fingernails and a crystal ball that would presumably work much better than Professor Trelawney’s.  
  
The woman facing him now was small and fine-boned, with features that looked French. She had brown hair worn in a plain, simple coil on the back of her neck, and watery blue eyes that peered at him with the help of glasses. Her robes were fine, and blood-red, but Draco would still have passed her without a single glance in the street.  
  
 _This_ was the leader of all the vampires in Great Britain? The person who was supposed to be in charge of him until he could be “trusted” not to drain humans to death? The one woman who had the right to deal with the Ministry of Magic and speak for all British vampires?  
  
Draco took his seat in front of her desk, but his gut was churning with anger. Madam Gloriosa peered at him one more time, then picked up a file from her desk and consulted it. At least the desk was mahogany and appropriate to her status, Draco thought, elaborately carved with depictions of vampires biting swooning witches and wizards.  
  
That was as it should be, he thought. He had been forced to give up so much when he became a vampire, from his wand to his ability to walk around in the daylight like a normal person (and vampires like Bones wanted him to give up on considering himself human, which would happen only over Draco’s undead body). He had at _least_ hoped that there would be some compensation in power and terror.  
  
But, no, V.A.M.P.S. controlled all vampires so sternly that there was no hope of that. There were all sorts of rules about who could be bitten and who couldn’t, how often vampires were to intrude into wizard-controlled areas, whether they had the right to enter Muggle-controlled ones at all, what magic potions and items they should be able to use in lieu of wands, and how much contact they should have with former friends. Draco had recognized all the regulations as chains the first moment he heard about them. Bones could chirp on and on about how they were necessary in order to soothe human fears and let vampires survive without persecution, but Draco thought they had traded their freedom for a very minimum security.  
  
“Ah, yes,” said Madam Gloriosa, pulling Draco’s attention back to her. She blinked at the parchment in front of her, and then glanced up at him, looking pleased. “We believe that we have identified your sire at last. Very, very unusual, this one. He hasn’t sired another vampire in more than two hundred years. Someone must have approached him and offered him a substantial amount of money to make you Rise.”  
  
“Wait,” Draco said. “Someone offered him _money_ to make me a vampire? Why would anyone do that? I thought he was just hungry, found me wandering along the edges of the Forbidden Forest, and took a bite.”  
  
“Well, yes, that was probably what you were meant to assume,” said Madam Gloriosa kindly. “But we gathered samples of your blood soon after you awakened, do you remember?”  
  
“Vaguely.” What Draco mostly remembered was an immense hunger that had eaten out the bottom of his stomach and seemed destined to eat out the bottom of the world, combined with thrashing and screaming that he didn’t like to recall in any way, since it was so undignified for a Malfoy to have done it.  
  
“We found traces of a potion. It’s called Noctambulism.” Gloriosa shrugged and turned the file towards him. Draco glanced down, but the spiky, cramped handwriting gave him a headache, and he looked away again. “It’s useless, really. All it does is make a person sleepwalk. But we think someone administered it to you to get you out of the school and close to the edge of the Forbidden Forest—where the Night King was waiting.”  
  
“Wait, wait,” Draco said again, and spread one hand. He was gratified to see that Madam Gloriosa paused. _So even she has to recognize the power of a Malfoy_. “Night King? Bones told me vampires don’t have any royalty.”  
  
“Oh, we don’t. But we find it politic to respect whatever titles our older members choose to call themselves by. It’s all about freedom of expression.”  
  
Draco grimaced. This kind of thing was what he hated most about V.A.M.P.S. They seemed to feel that people like Draco should be genuinely _happy_ about being vampires, and they used all sorts of cheery catchphrases and pamphlets and brochures to make it sound like jolly fun.  
  
“So someone paid to have me made a vampire,” he muttered. It didn’t sound any less incredible when _he_ said it. “Do you know whom?”  
  
“Vampires as old as the Night King must be approached carefully.” Gloriosa gave him a sympathetic smile. “I’m sure that you’ll be more interested in learning to live your life with the powers that the Night King granted to you with his bite. For example, did you know that you will probably become a bonded vampire? That happened to his last Risen One we have records of.”  
  
Draco frowned. “A bonded vampire?” Bones had chattered on to him, and so had the lesser functionaries of Madam Gloriosa he’d dealt with, about vampires who drank from various places on the human body, who could be hurt by the sight of moonlight, who were all but immune to common spells, but he hadn’t heard of anything like this. “I can conjure ropes?”  
  
Gloriosa laughed. Draco wondered if it was his imagination that it sounded a little forced. Perhaps he was getting to her, and she was being forced to realize that she had to deal with a _Malfoy_ more respectfully than she had to deal with your ordinary Mudblood vampire. “Not at all! It means that you can establish a bond with one particular human that will enable you to read that human’s thoughts and emotions, even from a distance. You’re luckier than most, in some respects. We have to spread our feedings carefully, and our donors can become nervous and withdraw their blood from us at any time. That rarely happens to a bonded vampire. A human finds the sharing of thoughts and emotions significant. They will become friends with the vampire who approaches them, sometimes lovers. It takes a lot to make them stop contributing blood. And it’s a perfectly legal and harmonious arrangement, long recognized by the Ministry, without the complications of consent that we need to go through with ordinary donors.” She looked faintly wistful for a moment.  
  
“I sense a catch coming up,” Draco said darkly.  
  
“Why would you think that?”  
  
“Because this— _this_ has been weird,” said Draco, and folded his arms. “There has to be a catch. Nothing that actually makes my lack of life any easier can be what it seems on the surface.”  
  
“I do wish that you would stop referring to it as your lack of life,” Gloriosa said reproachfully. “Vampires are _differently_ alive, not dead, or we could not exist at all. Susan tells me that you have continually used uncooperative phrasing, and seemed unwilling to attend group meetings for new Risen Ones that would help you engage with your new existence.”  
  
“Maybe because I never wanted to be a monster!” Draco leaned forwards. His objections had made no impression at all on the lackeys he’d dealt with before this; they’d been trained to smile and chirp cheerfully at him no matter what he said. Madam Gloriosa was high enough up that it might make a difference to her. “I wanted to be _human_! And now my wand’s been taken away, and I don’t know what I can do and what I can’t, and someone’s trying to _govern_ every detail of my life, and I don’t see why vampires can’t attack humans the way they want to when we obviously have the greater power—“  
  
Gloriosa’s eyes narrowed, and Draco abruptly found himself pinned to the far wall of the office with her hand around his throat. Draco choked; even though he didn’t need to breathe any longer, she was still crushing the skin and near to mangling his windpipe. And he hadn’t even seen her move.  
  
“You are being more than uncooperative,” Gloriosa said. “You are being _stupid_. We exist at the Ministry’s sufferance, _Mr_. Malfoy. We come up with our own laws and regulations because the ones they would create would enchain us even more effectively. We fight for our freedom slowly, using tactics that humans don’t notice because they don’t live long enough. But our numbers have always been small, and smaller still since only rogues and vampires old enough to escape most retribution make Risen Ones now.  
  
“I will not let you risk everything we’ve worked for because you’re a petulant child. I promise, while I will not destroy you, I know nearly everything possible about making a vampire’s existence uncomfortable. I’m six hundred years old, Mr. Malfoy, and you know nothing about me and the powers I wield thanks to my dam. If I decide to tame you, you will come out with even less intelligence behind your pretty little eyes than you have now.  
  
“Adapt to this, and _survive_.”  
  
She tossed him to the floor. Draco cried out as his skull banged against it, and then closed his eyes and did his best to concentrate on manipulating his neck back into shape.  
  
When he looked again, Madam Gloriosa was sitting behind her desk and checking quietly through his file once more.  
  
“You are right that there’s a disadvantage for bonded vampires,” she said, not glancing up. “Only certain kinds of humans with certain characteristics will do. For example, children of the Bone Queen can only bond humans born on Tuesdays when the moon is full. With the Night King as your sire—well.” She showed her fangs at him in what Draco was finally certain was not a smile. “You need to find someone who has returned from death. Good night, Mr. Malfoy. Susan will show you out.”  
  
*  
  
Harry pushed Malfoy’s file irritably away from him. It nearly tumbled off the desk the undersecretary had let him borrow, and he scrambled after it and caught the edge before it could fall on the floor. He knew that he would never get the papers back in the proper order to make it seem as if no one had been scrutinizing them at all.  
  
The file had actually told him very little. The Ministry had noted Malfoy’s disappearance, and sent two Aurors to Malfoy Manor to question Narcissa. Her report was “satisfactory,” they said, and confirmed that Draco Malfoy had not left the country. Then there had been a few desultory scouting expeditions abroad in Albania, supposedly Lucius Malfoy’s first destination, and then nothing.  
  
It didn’t make _sense._  
  
Unless there were factions in the Ministry who didn’t want the free Death Eaters caught.  
Harry drummed his fingers on the edge of the desk. Of course he knew that things hadn’t just changed miraculously for the better when Kingsley took over. But knowing that was one thing and coming face-to-face with it was another.  
  
The door squeaked. Harry jumped up and turned towards it. The undersecretary had assured him that the old wizard who used the office was out sick for the day, but this wouldn’t be the first time Harry had had a plan involving the Ministry go horribly wrong.  
  
He reached for his wand, but then heard the familiar voice of the undersecretary calling, “Mr. Potter? Are you done with the file? Only I should return it as soon as possible, they’re doing all sorts of new filing checks and it’ll be missed.”  
  
Harry relaxed and picked up the file. “I’ll be out in a moment, Katie,” he called, casting a spell that Hermione had taught him which removed all traces of his magical signature from the file. No reason for someone to get curious.  
  
 _I’ll be glad when I get Malfoy off my mind. All this concern over him is making me paranoid._  
  
He unlocked the door and stepped through—nearly into Katie’s arms. She gazed at him with horribly dazzled eyes, even compared to the way that Ginny used to look at him.  
  
Harry swallowed. He hated it when people treated him as if he were some sort of great savior. He’d just done what he had to do, and it had been more dangerous and threatening and messy than anything else. He handed Katie back the file, dodged her when she would have grasped his wrist, and said, “Thanks for letting me look at it. I might have found the information I needed to stop Malfoy.”  
  
“Really?” Katie sidled a few steps nearer, a slight glamour spell sparkling off her earrings. They were kittens, which reminded Harry nauseatingly of Umbridge. “How _wonderful_.”  
  
“Er, yes.” Harry took a few quick steps and managed to get around her. He didn’t understand why he felt something like panic welling up in his chest. It couldn’t just be the star-struck look; he’d managed to live with the fact that Ginny had a crush on him for being her hero.  
  
 _Although she’s looked at me like that a few times since the end of the war, and that was when my discomfort with her started…_  
  
Harry shook his head. He had enough thoughts that he couldn’t explain floating around his head, he didn’t need _more_.  
  
“Thanks,” he repeated, and then did something which, had he been less manly, would have been called fleeing.  
  
He steadied himself as he walked to the lifts that would carry him out of the Ministry. He had a perfectly good excuse for being here. His training sessions had been separate from Ron’s lately, as their mentors tried to accustom them to working with different partners, and so Ron didn’t know for certain what time he was supposed to be home.  
  
His course of action was depressingly clear now, though. He would get no answers except by going to Malfoy Manor himself.  
  
*  
  
“I don’t really see how it’s the end of the world, darling.”  
  
Draco groaned and draped his arm over his face. He didn’t need to sleep during the day if he didn’t want to, but even with the black curtains pulled tight around the windows of his bedroom and muffling spells doing all they could, he fancied he still caught bright, stinging sparks of light that hurt his eyes. “Because I don’t _know_ anyone who came back from the dead, Mother,” he said. “And if that’s the person I can best feed on, then it seems I’m having no better luck as a vampire than I did as a human.”  
  
“But of course you know someone who came back from the dead,” Narcissa said.  
  
Draco rolled over and dragged his arm from his face, staring. His mother sat on the edge of a chair, her hands shuffling through papers that represented the latest attempts by various people harmed during the war to claim attention and money from the Malfoy family. A small lamp sat next to her to provide light. She glanced up with a raised eyebrow when she felt Draco’s gaze. “What is it?”  
  
“I don’t know _anyone_ —“  
  
“Harry Potter,” Narcissa said, and then made a moue of distaste at the parchment in front of her. “Oh, dear. You would think that this awful woman, this Louise Fleming, would give up. I know very well that Lucius never targeted any half-bloods during the month of August 1997, because he was in the Manor with me.”  
  
“Harry Potter,” Draco said in a tone of heavy sarcasm, determined to make her pay attention to him and his problems. They were _serious_ , damn it.  
  
“Yes, of course.” Narcissa scratched a mark on the parchment with her quill, and then glanced at him curiously. “I was right there when the Dark Lord cast the Killing Curse. I saw it hit him. It did not bounce, as it did when he was a baby. It left no curse scar. But when I checked him for signs of life, he was breathing.”  
  
“That doesn’t mean he actually died,” Draco said with some asperity.  
  
“You will forgive me, Draco,” Narcissa said, narrowing her eyes a little, “for believing that I know what death by Killing Curse looks like.”  
  
Draco glanced away. He had forgotten, for a moment, how many prisoners his mother had seen tortured and then killed in front of her during the months when the Dark Lord lived here. It was something he always swore that he would never forget, but he always did. Becoming a vampire had changed his priorities immensely.  
  
“But I—“ he said, and then shook his head. “Even if that’s true, it’s even _worse_ , because there’s no way that he would agree to bond with me.”  
  
“How do you know that?” Narcissa turned over two papers and then made an exasperated little noise as they stuck together.  
  
“He’s my _enemy_ , Mother,” Draco said, and had to look away again, because the light of the lamp was making his eyes water. “Even during that last year of school, he never looked my way. He didn’t fight with me, but he made it clear that he had no time for anyone who had fought on the Dark Lord’s side.”  
  
“Of course you would expect him to feel that way,” said his mother, and pulled the papers apart. “But you have suffered a horrible fate—although I do not think it is so horrible as you make it out to be—and your choices are rather limited. He’s a hero, Draco, in the strictest sense of the term. He will respond to an appeal for his help better than he would respond to a bribe or antagonism.”  
  
“I don’t think he can forget what we were like together, as boys,” Draco whispered dejectedly.  
  
“He is a young man now, in Auror training. And I don’t see that you can do anything but ask him.”  
  
Draco sighed gustily. “Of course I can’t. I’ll write to him tomorrow.”  
  
His mother stood and came across the carpet to him, kissing his forehead gently. She had never shown any sign of flinching or distaste that his skin was now cold most of the time, and for that, among other things, Draco was intensely grateful to her. “That’s my brave boy,” she said, and patted his shoulder. “You’ve moped quite enough. Time to move on to other things now.”  
  
When she left, Draco scowled at the wall. It wasn’t _his_ fault he had become a vampire. It wasn’t _his_ fault that he was rather upset about his life changing so drastically.  
  
But try as he might, he couldn’t better the description of moping for his actions in the past several months. Maybe it _was_ time to stop.

*

  
Harry turned the letter over twice and stared at it, then picked up the envelope and stared at it again.  
  
They looked the same no matter how long he stared, though, and the letter said the same thing.  
  
 _Potter:  
  
I know that you have no reason to like or trust me, but I’ve fallen into a trap that no one can get me out of but you_. Please _come to Malfoy Manor at six in the evening two days from now. Don’t bring anyone else with you. I realize that sounds like a trap for you, but just consider how much trouble I could get into if I were connected with the disappearance of Harry Potter. Tell anyone about this you like.  
  
Draco Malfoy. _  
  
Harry handed it over to Hermione with a silent shake of his head. She had demanded to know what it said the moment she saw the expression on his face, but Harry had wanted the chance to come to conclusions of his own before she told him what to think.  
  
Now he flopped back on the chair and stared at the ceiling again. Today, the cracks were just a maze of cracks, insufficient to distract him from his thoughts.  
  
It _had_ to be a trap, didn’t it? Pleasant coincidences like this didn’t just fall into his lap. _Unpleasant_ ones, sure, they happened all the time. Maybe Malfoy had heard that Harry was trying to research his little disappearance and planned to warn him off permanently.  
  
 _But if he was, sending such a public letter seems like an awfully stupid way to go about it._  
  
Harry scratched the corner of his lip and pondered for a moment. Then Hermione choked. He looked at her and saw her tapping the letter against her palm, staring at it in wonder.  
“Incredible, isn’t it?” he muttered. “I just can’t figure out what he _wants_ from me. I mean, he has to know that I won’t get him out of trouble with the Ministry or settle his debts or anything like that.”  
  
“I think he’s sincere,” Hermione announced.  
  
“ _What_?” Harry had never expected Hermione to utter that word in conjunction with Draco Malfoy, unless it was in the phrase “sincere about his beliefs in the superiority of pure-blood wizards.”  
  
“As you say, I can’t think why he would write to you about a problem that he _knows_ you wouldn’t solve. He would go to anyone else first.” Hermione pursed her lips. “So this must be a problem that he thinks you _will_ solve for him.”  
  
“Or he’s just so arrogant that he thinks I’ll jump at the chance to help him,” Harry suggested hopefully. Now that he did have a chance of going to the Manor, he found himself reluctant to take it. It had been more—well, more fun when he was chasing secrets that he knew no one wanted him to discover.  
  
“He knows you too well for that.” Hermione handed the letter back. “Anyway, I know about it now, and I’ll tell at least a few other people. Not Ron,” she added, when Harry opened his mouth. “He’d never let you go alone. But I really don’t think this is revenge, Harry. The Malfoys fought too hard to maintain what standing they still have. Narcissa Malfoy’s paid off her debts, though of course their fortune is smaller than it used to be, and cooperated with the Ministry as much as she could about her husband’s disappearance. Why would they risk that just to kill you? It doesn’t make sense.”  
  
“They don’t have to make sense,” Harry muttered, crossing his arms over his chest, even though he knew he looked like a petulant little boy when he did that. _So what? I can be petulant once in a while_. “They never did in school, and Malfoy could never see reality. Why should he have started now?”  
  
“He might have changed. The war and the last year at school changed you.” Hermione frowned at him. “Though not as much as I could have hoped for,” she added, in a mutter he was obviously meant to hear.  
  
Harry started to object, but someone knocked on the door. The wards on the flat buzzed in recognition of whoever it was, so Harry waved his wand and opened the door, assuming Ron had come back from Auror training early.  
  
He felt his guts shrivel up when Ginny peered hopefully in. Her face lit up at the sight of Harry. She nodded and slipped in. A covered plate bobbed behind her, giving her an excuse for arriving.  
  
Harry glanced away, his face hot with embarrassment. Really, he didn’t understand what was _wrong_ with him. The bright gleam in Ginny’s eyes when she saw him could just be affection, not star-struck infatuation. But he knew he didn’t want to be alone with her, and he silently begged Hermione with his eyes not to leave him there.  
  
He’d forgotten that not telling Hermione about his changed feelings for Ginny meant she was less than able to read his eyes. She smiled and stood. “Hi, Ginny,” she said. “Molly sent our dinner over, I presume? It smells delicious.”  
  
“Yes. Mum got tired of listening to Ron complain during his last Floo call, so she made you a few meals.” Ginny smiled at Hermione, but her smile became something softer altogether when she looked at Harry. “Hullo, Harry,” she said.  
  
Harry gave a feeble smile back.  
  
“I’ll make sure it doesn’t get cold,” Hermione said, and flicked her wand, calling the dish away from Ginny to follow her. Harry tried some more mute begging, but Hermione strode into the kitchen and then began clattering about, very obviously letting them know that she wasn’t listening.  
  
When he turned back, miserably, to the drawing room, Ginny had sat down on the stool in front of the couch. She was watching him with a faint smile that Harry knew he would have found irresistibly enticing just a year ago.  
  
And now he didn’t.  
  
 _What the fuck is wrong with me?_ he thought, and resisted the urge to smack himself in the forehead.  
  
“Harry,” Ginny said, and lowered her eyes. She seemed to be waiting for something. Probably for him to say something that didn’t sound idiotic, Harry thought dully. Well, in that case, she might have a long wait.  
  
“Hi, Ginny,” he said.  
  
Then they sat in silence for a few moments. The rattling of pots and pans from the kitchen was beginning to sound desperate.  
  
“I want to know why you never come to the Burrow anymore,” Ginny said abruptly. Startled, Harry whipped his head away from the kitchen doorway, which he had been staring at in the forlorn hope that Hermione would appear in it, and looked at her. She was twisting a curl of hair around her finger and looking at the floor. She spoke so fast and in such a hurried way that he could hardly make her words out. “I mean, sometimes you do, but it’s always _with_ Ron and Hermione, and you make excuses as often as you can, and you never want to be alone with me, and I—“ She looked up, shaking her head. “What is it, Harry? What did I do or say that makes you not want to be with me anymore?”  
  
Harry took a deep breath.  > _Nothing for it, I reckon_. “Nothing,” he said gently. “This is all me, Gin, not you. I just haven’t wanted to date you for a while now.” He shrugged when she blinked at him. “I don’t know why. I do like you, but it’s—” He cut himself off before he could tell her that it was Malfoy he thought about, not her. God knew what kind of interpretation she would put on _those_ words.  
  
“If you like me,” Ginny said slowly, like someone feeling out the points of a complex equation, “and I like you—which I do—then why don’t you want to date me?”  
  
Harry shook his head. “I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s just—I changed, over the last year. Maybe this is another sign of it?” He winced at a particularly loud clang from the kitchen, wondering if Hermione was throwing the cutlery against the wall to get it to make that amount of noise.  
  
Ginny snorted and folded her arms. “I don’t think so, Harry. You’ve been avoiding me for just the last six months. Before that, you were happy enough to at least snog me and flirt with me. What _changed_?”  
  
“I _don’t know_.”  
  
“That’s not an answer.” There was a glitter in Ginny’s eyes, but based on the flush on her cheeks, Harry thought it was from anger, not tears. He was glad. He might have given in if he’d seen tears. “I want an answer, Harry.”  
  
Harry waved a hand vaguely in the air. “I don’t know! I just don’t think about you the same way anymore.” He wasn’t going to accuse Ginny of dating him only for his name. He had no idea if that was true, while he never would have doubted it was true if it had been someone like Katie. “I just—it’s like I fell out of love with you somewhere along the way and didn’t notice.”  
  
Ginny stood up, staring at him all the while as if he had just admitted to having the Dark Mark. Harry stared back. He knew it didn’t sound like a good explanation, because it wasn’t. But he didn’t know what else to say, because that was the truth.  
  
“I’ll ask you again in four days,” Ginny said evenly. “Maybe you’ll have something that at least _sounds_ better to tell me if I give you a deadline.” She strode to the door, opened it, and stepped out. Harry sighed, imagining for a moment what the snowflakes falling and catching in her hair would look like. But the image simply sat in his head, not at all interesting.  
  
Hermione appeared in the kitchen doorway the moment the door of the flat closed, blinking. “Didn’t it go well?” she asked.  
  
Harry shook his head briskly and stood. “I’m going to visit Malfoy in two days,” he said to Hermione as he headed for his bedroom. “I want to brush up on my defensive spells.” And he would see what the git wanted, and hunt subtly for clues as to Malfoy’s innocence or guilt in the matter of his father’s disappearance. Maybe it was an obsession—in a shallow way—and once he learned the truth, then he could be free of thoughts like this about Malfoy and go back to liking Ginny and having a normal life.  
  
*  
  
Potter walked into the small, comfortable study Draco had chosen to receive him as though he suspected there were pit traps under the floor. He looked at the wine Draco gave him as if it were poisoned. Then he swilled it. Draco did his best not to wince.  
Of course, there was more than one thing to wince at; if he didn’t think about Potter’s boorish behavior, then he had to think about his own reaction to the idiot. The moment Potter had walked into the room, Draco’s gaze had darted to his neck. It was partially covered by the collar of the dark green robes Potter wore, but that didn’t matter. Draco had a hard time paying attention to anything else.  
  
And he could feel hunger welling up in his stomach, as usual. It shouldn’t have been; Narcissa had insisted that he drink well of a vial of her blood before he confronted Potter, and Draco thought it was a sensible idea. But this was a different sort of hunger, such as he used to feel about sweets even when he was too full of a proper meal to eat any more. His mother’s blood was enough to keep life—well, all right, a _kind_ of life—thrumming along his veins. Potter’s blood, which he could smell and hear surging gently against his skin, would taste sweet and wonderfully warm. Draco knew it would shine, too, with the magic Potter radiated and the curse he had resisted. It—  
  
“Why did you ask me here, Malfoy?”  
  
Draco resisted shaking his head by the barest of margins. He had lost himself in the contemplation of Potter’s blood, and his carefully prepared speech had flowed out of his head. He was too overwhelmed with the evidence that his mother and Madam Gloriosa had been _right_. He wanted to feed on and bond to someone who had come back from death. Inconvenient as it was and however much the fault of the Night King it was for biting him and Potter for being stupidly heroic enough to sacrifice his life for others, Potter was the best candidate for that.  
  
“You may have noticed that I disappeared last June,” he said, and he told himself that his voice did not shake. Well, not enough for an obtuse idiot like Potter to perceive, anyway.  
  
“Yes. Hard not to notice.” Potter set his glass of wine down on the table next to the chair and frowned at him. Draco was sitting behind the polished and carved cherry desk which had once been his father’s to impress visitors with—and it was much more impressive than Madam Gloriosa’s, thank you—while Potter sat in an enormously comfortable chair about five feet away from the desk. Draco had thought the desk was a good idea. Now he wished he was on the other side of it, preferably in Potter’s lap. “I don’t reckon you’ll tell me where you went?”  
  
Draco nodded, and licked his lips. Bloody hell, now it was as if he hadn’t drunk at all. The beat of Potter’s blood had just risen, as if he thought he were going to hear something startling or incriminating, and Draco wanted to faint. Or bite him. No, just the second.  
  
“I—didn’t really go anywhere,” he said. “I just couldn’t attend school for a while. Because of this.” Faced with no more graceful way that he knew of to make the revelation, he opened his mouth and lengthened his fangs.  
  
The look of astonishment on Potter’s face was gratifying.  
  
*  
  
Harry knew he was probably being impolite and Hermione would scold him for it if she were here, but he couldn’t quite take his eyes off Malfoy’s fangs, or fight the disappointment pounding behind his eyes.  
  
 _It doesn’t have anything to do with his father? He’s become a_ vampire _now?_  
  
Harry swallowed. He had come anticipating a grand adventure, an edged exchange where he would act the daring spy and Malfoy would give away all sorts of information without even knowing he did it. This didn’t look as though it would turn into something like that.  
  
“I don’t see how I can help you, Malfoy,” he said at last. “I mean, being a vampire isn’t a _problem_ , is it? Or a trap? Just something you are.”  
  
Malfoy fidgeted for a moment, then seemed to decide he shouldn’t hold back the information about what he wanted any more than he’d held back when showing Harry his fangs. He was a bit paler, and his eyes had altered, becoming full of shadows, though Harry had just assumed that was the result of the flickering firelight in the study’s large hearth. “I—look, Potter, it’s like this. Vampires feed better on certain people depending on whom their sires were. It turns out that the vampire who bit me can bond with humans, link their thoughts and emotions to his. And he feeds best on people who have come back from death. Which means I do, too.” He paused and gave Harry a significant look.  
  
It still took Harry a moment to get it, because he could not believe Malfoy would want to bite him, regardless of what strange dietary requirements he had because he was enough of an idiot to stroll along the edge of the Forbidden Forest. Then he figured it out, and shot to his feet. “ _No_ ,” he said.  
  
Malfoy rose at the same time. His face was smoothing out with irritation, making him look more like the git Harry had once known and less like—well, something alien. “You have to,” he said. “You’re the only one—it’s not like someone dies and comes back every single day, you know—“  
  
“I don’t care,” Harry said flatly. “No means no, Malfoy. I’m not about to let you bite my neck—“  
  
“It wouldn’t have to come from your neck, at first, although blood from the wrist makes me a bit sick—“  
  
“Just no,” Harry said. “Go haunt St. Mungo’s. Maybe they can help you with someone whose heart stopped.” And he turned his back and began to walk out of the room. There was no mystery. There were no Death Eaters. He had thought about Malfoy for months for no reason whatsoever. Harry wasn’t sure why he should feel the crushing disappointment that he did. After all, it just meant, as he’d told Ginny, that he had no good excuse for his recent behavior whatsoever—which he already knew.  
  
*  
  
Draco was sure he knew what a starving man would feel to see a cow walking away from him. His anger surged to life, and he leaped straight over the desk and in front of Potter before he knew what he was doing.  
  
Potter just halted and stared back at him, not even having the sense to be afraid. Then his jaw set, and Draco heard the faint sound of his teeth grinding. “Get out of my _way_ , Malfoy.”  
  
“No,” Draco said. He couldn’t meet Potter’s eyes. He was rather fascinated by that neck. It glistened with a faint sheen of sweat, showing that Potter was more alert or nervous than he pretended to be, and Draco could _see_ the blood under the skin now. He had never thought he would be so grateful for a vampire’s enhanced senses, which most of the time just brought him house-elf chattering from the kitchens when he was trying to nap and told him far too much about the compounds spread in the flowerbeds.  
  
“I’ll make you, then,” Potter said, stupid as ever, and reached for his wand.  
  
Draco shot out a hand to stop him.  
  
His hand closed on Potter’s wrist, and that was all it took. In an instant his head was crowded with thoughts not his own, angry and outraged thoughts about how Malfoy was a git and Ginny would not be pleased with him and he still didn’t know why he’d spent months _thinking_ about this—  
  
Potter screamed. “Malfoy, get _out of my head_!” He stepped sharply to the side, and because Draco’s grip had slackened in his astonishment, managed to free himself. He drew his wand in the next instant, and cast an _Incendio_ that Draco had to leap over and out of the way of.  
  
He didn’t mind. His attention was tangled up in wonder and even delight. He had thought he would hate sensing someone else’s emotions and thoughts, no matter why. He hadn’t realized that he would _taste_ Potter’s confusion in his mouth, and that his thoughts would sound clearly separate and distinct from Draco’s own, making his mind more like a whole other realm to explore. Draco knew what the world looked like from the inside of someone else’s head now.  
  
It was wonderful. It was—  
  
“ _Incarcerous_!” Potter yelled, and suddenly Draco was thrown on the floor, tied in ropes that even his vampire strength, when he tried it against them, couldn’t break. Potter must have been maddened with fear and confusion—as, indeed, he had been—to put that force of will behind his spell.  
  
“Look, Potter,” he said, very reasonably he thought, considering everything that had just happened. “Obviously the bond was preparing us for this even before we met. You started thinking about me—“ He paused, and wondered how he would be able to pull the information he wanted from the cacophony of Potter’s thoughts.  
  
Almost immediately, though, he heard Potter’s voice saying in his head, _Six months_.  
  
“Six months ago,” he said. “That’s since June. Since I became a vampire. And you have no reason to think about me, you said—thought—that yourself—“  
  
“How did you do that?” Potter demanded, clutching his ears as if that would somehow hide the inside of his head. Amused, Draco fired off the admonition that of course it wouldn’t, and received a snarl in return. “I wasn’t thinking that. End this bond, or whatever it is, and _leave me the fuck alone_.”  
  
“No,” Draco said. He hadn’t chosen to be a vampire, and he would still go back and become a human again if he could, but for the first time, he thought it might be bearable. “I don’t want to. Your blood is going to taste delicious, and even your _mind_ does. You can run away if you like,” he added, as that impulse came to the forefront of Harry’s thoughts. “But I don’t think the bond is affected by distance.”  
  
“This is so completely mad,” Harry whispered, his voice starting to break as his head fell into his hands, and Draco did have a moment where he felt sorry for him—until Harry glared at him around the corner of his palm and hissed, “I don’t _want_ your pity.”  
  
“Yes, well, it’s what you have,” Draco said, and exerted his strength against the ropes again. Maybe he hadn’t really been trying before, because they fell away from him and he sat up, blinking. Harry backed away several steps, eyes wide and breathing wild, and then turned around and fled the house.  
  
Draco waited. After a moment, he helpfully thought, _See, I don’t think it gets better with distance at all.  
  
Fuck you_ , Harry snarled, his voice just as loud as if they’d still been in the same room together, and then Draco felt the tug of his Apparition.  
  
*  
  
“Harry?” Hermione’s wand was lifted high so that her _Lumos_ charm glinted off the walls. Her voice was sharp but soft; she was trying not to wake Ron, Harry knew, who had failed an exam badly that day and only wanted to sleep. “What are you _doing_? It’s three-o’clock in the morning, in case you didn’t notice!”  
  
 _I noticed_ , Harry thought mutinously.  
  
 _Then why didn’t you go to bed like a good little Gryffindor boy-toy_? Malfoy said in his head, his voice precisely as irritating as it had been when they stood next to each other. _You are her boy-toy, aren’t you? I mean, why else would one woman and two men take a flat together?_  
  
Harry couldn’t help the immediate disgust at the thought of having sex with Hermione that followed, and Malfoy purred and laughed at him. _There_ was a disturbing set of sensations. It made Harry feel as though his skull was lined with velvet. _That just makes it all the more clear that you’re gay, and that you’ve been waiting for me because no ordinary lover could satisfy you.  
  
You don’t have to be so bloody cheerful all the time_ , Harry snarled at him as he turned to answer Hermione. _A few hours ago you were just as desperate to get out of this as I am.  
  
Your blood smells delicious_ , said Malfoy, like the inane vampire he was.  
  
Harry gritted his teeth, and only then noticed that Hermione was staring at him. He sighed. He hadn’t yet adapted to carrying on one conversation silently whilst carrying on another aloud. “I know, Hermione,” he whispered. “But I can’t find the books that I’m sure you bought on vampires at one point, and—“  
  
Hermione crossed the room in three steps, her wand uplifted, and shone it into his eyes. Harry flinched and ducked his head. “Did Malfoy make you into a _vampire_?” Hermione demanded, her voice spiraling towards the dangerous territory known as “waking Ron up.”  
  
 _Of course not. Vampire blood tastes horrible._  
  
“Of course not,” Harry said, and then winced when he realized he was echoing Malfoy, even though it hadn’t been on purpose. Malfoy gave the velvet-laugh again. “He _is_ a vampire, and he’s cast some sort of spell on me. It—it makes me hear his thoughts and feel his emotions, and he claims that he needs my blood since I came back from the dead. It’s all very confusing. All I know is that I want it gone.”  
  
Hermione gave a soft little sigh, and then nodded. Harry recognized her “research face” in the next moment. “All right, Harry,” she said. “I don’t think I know off the top of my head just what happened or what kind of solution it warrants, but I promise we’ll find one.” She caught and pressed his hand. “ _In the morning_.”  
  
“Hermione—“  
  
“You have an exam tomorrow,” Hermione said, in the voice Mrs. Weasley had used when talking about Bill and Fleur’s wedding.  
  
Harry knew it was no use trying to talk his way past Hermione with an exam in the offing, so he gave in, reluctantly, and allowed himself to be dragged off to bed. It wasn’t until he was putting his head down on the pillow that he realized he hadn’t heard anything from Malfoy in the past several minutes.  
  
 _I don’t have much to say to you right now_ , Malfoy said just then. _I would wish that you have pleasant dreams, but I know you will._  
  
Harry was asleep before he could ask what that meant. It really had been a long day, and he’d had several shocks.  
  
But then Malfoy was waiting for him in his dreams, so that was no escape, either.  
  
*  
  
“I must say, Mr. Malfoy,” said Madam Gloriosa, studying him, “your attitude seems much improved.”  
  
“I’ve found the person I want to bond with and feed from,” Draco said. He felt incredibly energized, even though he hadn’t touched Harry’s blood yet. Perhaps it was the feeling that his life as a vampire would be bearable after all, since he got to continually throw Harry off-balance for eternity. “Actually, I’ve bonded to him already. When my hand touched his skin, it happened.”  
  
He brushed the ball of emotions in his head that was Harry. It shifted and pushed back nothing but warmth, showing he was still asleep.  
  
“That is indeed fast.” Madam Gloriosa folded her hands on top of the desk and watched him. Draco wondered why she didn’t look happier for him. “Most humans will not give immediate consent to a procedure so intimate.”  
  
“Oh, I didn’t really get his consent.” Draco airily waved a hand.  
  
And once again he found himself pinned to the wall on the far side of the room with her hand around his throat.  
  
“What?” he gasped. The ball of emotions in the back of his head started to move. Presumably his pain and outrage were cutting through the distance between them and into Harry’s restless dreams. “You said that it wasn’t as complicated as other forms of consent! I thought that meant—“  
  
“You are still supposed to _persuade_ him first, not attack him like a ravening beast,” Gloriosa hissed. Her lips and gums had actually drawn back so that Draco could see the skin lying behind them. That was unnerving. He supposed it was a power that she’d inherited from her dam. “This is not about a matter of legality now, but of courtesy. If he complains, he could make all vampires look bad! People listen to someone with power like his.”  
  
Draco blinked. Even with the pain in his throat, something rang false about the way she’d spoken. “What do you mean, power like his? I haven’t told you who he is yet.” The ball in the back of his head radiated unhappiness at him. Without even thinking about it, Draco sent soothing feelings in its direction.  
  
Abruptly, he was on the floor again, wrenching his crushed windpipe back into order. Gloriosa was on the other side of the desk again, her eyes narrowed and her head cocked.  
“You mentioned it as soon as you walked in here,” she said. “To Bones. It was Harry Potter.”  
  
“No, I didn’t,” said Draco. He was sure about that, since he had wanted to save it for a surprise and see the look on Gloriosa’s face when she heard. “How did you _know_?” A strange rippling sensation traveled down his arms, and he was startled to see the ends of his fingers open up and produce claws.  
  
“ _That_ is an unrecognized power in one of the Night King’s children,” said Madam Gloriosa, distracted at once. She leaned forwards to get a better look at Draco’s claws. Draco resisted the temptation to oblige her by sticking one in her face. She was still probably stronger and faster than he was. “He has sired some children with very strong hands, however. That trait undoubtedly combined with your own unique magic to give you those claws.” She nodded, and then picked up a piece of parchment from her desk and made a note of it.  
  
Draco blinked, thrown. He _had_ read, in some of the promotional literature Bones had shoved at him, that vampires had a tendency to become obsessed with whatever their strongest passion was, especially at advanced ages. It was why some had been tricked into defeat in situations that the simplest human would have seen through. Apparently Gloriosa’s obsession was keeping track of every single minute alteration in vampire blood genetics.  
  
He wasn’t about to let that put him off what he’d realized, though. He folded his arms, though he winced when one of his claws dug into his elbow. “Why and when did you realize that my mate was Harry Potter?”  
  
Gloriosa surveyed him through narrowed eyes for a long moment. Then she said, “A few nights ago, someone approached me about your—condition.”  
  
Draco tensed. “Oh?” He knew his mother had bribed a few of the Ministry officials who visited the Manor so that, while he was registered as a vampire, his condition wasn’t being yelled from the rooftops. If Gloriosa knew, she could have got the information only from a limited number of people.  
  
“Yes.” The vampire scraped her nails gently across the desk. “They knew the identity of the person who paid to have you fed with Noctambulism potion and turned into a vampire.” She looked at him steadily. “I must say that, on the whole, I agree with the decision. Your—protector—was apparently worried that you would get yourself into trouble without some extra magic and a system of strong friends around you. V.A.M.P.S. can be that for you, Mr. Malfoy, if you will stop trying to cause trouble. Even Harry Potter can be that for you, if you don’t antagonize him so much that he resists the bond. It’s rare, but it can happen.”  
  
Draco scowled. “I assume this same person paid for the Night King to come to the Forbidden Forest and bite me?”  
  
Gloriosa nodded.  
  
“Does this _person_ think I’m weak, then?” Draco asked.  
  
“In some respects, yes,” Gloriosa said. “I can name several weaknesses, such as not knowing when to keep your mouth shut and unfairly attacking your bonded mate—“  
  
“I didn’t _attack_ —“  
  
“But the strongest one is undoubtedly your denial of reality.” Gloriosa leaned forwards and stared at him. “You have not understood, for example, that you cannot really reverse the vampire transformation. You still think of your bonded human as a toy, not someone with thoughts and feelings of his own. Have you even considered what will happen when he ages and dies, while you remain alive?”  
  
Draco opened his mouth, then shut it. He had been about to answer that he would turn Potter into a vampire, but of course that would make his blood taste awful. He scowled at the floor. Every time he thought he had discovered something to rejoice about, someone took it away from him.  
  
“Is there a way to keep him alive?” he asked.  
  
“There are anti-aging potions, yes.” Gloriosa shrugged a little. “Not usually available outside V.A.M.P.S., or many more wizards would take advantage of them than do. But I think that we need to make a trade, Mr. Malfoy.”  
  
Draco glared at her. She didn’t appear affected.  
  
“I will teach you how to brew such a potion,” said Gloriosa, “when you show me that you have accepted your responsibilities as a member of the vampire community.”  
  
Draco could feel the skin of his face turning even waxier than it usually was. “I can’t—you can’t mean—“  
  
“I do.” Gloriosa pulled out the words as if she were drawing a sword from a silk sheath. “Group therapy.”  
  
*  
  
Harry stared at the question and reread it again. How was _he_ supposed to know the one legitimate use of unicorns’ blood permitted to Potions experts? He had a mad vampire living in his head, and he had been too preoccupied in the last few days to concentrate on his studies.  
  
It didn’t help that he could hear the steady rasp of Hermione’s quill over the stuttering scratches of the others. She was strolling through the exam, of course. She was probably already finished, Harry thought, and just going back to check her answers.  
  
The really offensive thing, though, was that _Ron_ , of all people, had started out the exam with a frown on his face, but was now half-smiling as he wrote busily across the last page. While Harry was still stuck on the second sheet of parchment out of the five.  
  
 _He got some sleep, though_ , Harry thought. _He didn’t have dreams of Malfoy sucking him off until he screamed, and gnawing on his neck—  
  
It would not be gnawing, Harry. It would be a little delicate bite, which you would find quite pleasurable. Or did you think your dreams were lying about that?_  
  
Harry took a huffing breath, and then determined to ignore Malfoy. He also determined to keep calling him “Malfoy” in his head; his thoughts kept wanting to switch over to Draco, on the absurd premise that he probably knew him better than he knew Ginny now, and he called Ginny by her first name.  
  
 _The answer to your question is “to clean teeth,” by the way_.  
  
“What?” Harry said aloud. The proctor, a tall Auror with a scar across his face so deep that his teeth showed where his lips had been twisted to the side, turned about and frowned. Harry ducked his head hastily over his parchment again and stared once more at the question about the legitimate use of unicorns’ blood.  
  
 _The answer to your question_. Draco—Malfoy’s—voice was patient and smooth. _Unicorns’ blood cleans other ingredients better than anything else. But teeth need to be polished of their enamel and any—pieces—of the original owner that might cling to them when they’re handed over to the Potions expert. Fancy not knowing that. I reckon they covered it, and you were daydreaming of me instead._  
  
Harry scowled. But he really had no idea what else to write, so he shrugged and wrote down “to clean teeth,” then moved on to the next question. To his smugness, it was one he knew and didn’t need Malfoy’s help with.  
  
Malfoy hummed in the back of his head as he worked, though, and finally Harry couldn’t stand it any longer. _Don’t you have a sun to be hiding from_? he asked, as he answered a question about the Second Goblin Rebellion and how it had been put down.  
  
 _I don’t sleep the day through_ , Malfoy said with some asperity. Harry felt his distaste for those vampires that did, as slimy and disgusting as a giant ball of earwax. _I catch quick naps here and there as I can, but I need less sleep now than I ever did_. He paused, and his voice turned sly. _Imagine that. I can be up all night—or all day, in a properly darkened room—pleasuring you.  
  
And the answer to that next question on your exam is “to hold up the pillars of the world.”_  
  
Harry held very still, not glancing down at the next question. _You can see out of my eyes now?  
  
No. You saw it from the corner of your eye and noted it subconsciously. I was able to draw it up into my own full consciousness, that’s all.  
  
This is ridiculous_ , Harry thought, but when he glanced at the question full-on, it proved to be another where he didn’t have a better answer. What was the legendary purpose of a stem of feverfew and roses? Who cared?  
  
 _You might care when you’re in the field_ , Malfoy said casually. _I’d like the human I’m bonded to to live, you know, instead of dying. I imagine the pain of your death would not be at all pleasant for me.  
  
I don’t understand you, Malfoy_ , Harry said, though he had to admit that wanting to avoid the pain of death made sense. _Why are you helping me? Why do you sound different than you did yesterday evening?  
  
Because I made a mistake_ , Malfoy said bluntly. Harry suddenly wished he could be in the same room with the git, to see the wince he would have made at having to admit he was wrong. _I should have initiated the bond slowly, not grabbed you like that. I didn’t know it would come to life as soon as I touched you. I just saw you about to leave and panicked. But that’s still a bad thing, because_ —Harry could feel the distaste in Malfoy’s voice on his own tongue— _I have to be more knowledgeable about my powers and abilities in order to function adequately as a responsible vampire.  
  
Who told you that?  
  
V.A.M.P.S. The Vampire Association for the Management and Protection of the Species. They’re horrid, Harry, absolutely horrid_. Harry felt as if his mouth were being washed out with toothpaste, for a moment; that was Malfoy’s fastidious shrug. _You’ll have to deal with them less than I’ll have to, at least, though Madam Gloriosa, the leader or president or maybe queen, will want to meet you.  
  
So there are—what, guides to being undead?  
  
Guides to being undead. Guides to how to act around humans. One called, “Sharing Heart’s Blood: Loving and Respecting Your Donors_.” Malfoy moaned. _It’s not as though I chose this, Harry. Someone signed me up for it._  
  
Harry bit his lip so that his laughter wouldn’t become audible.  
  
 _I still know you’re amused, you realize.  
  
Yes, but I don’t want to laugh out loud and make the proctor look at me again._  
  
Harry returned to writing. He had—well, he had to admit that Malfoy hadn’t been entirely awful to him in the last few minutes, and he might even have given him the right answers for the questions. Not that Harry would know until the exams were marked and returned, of course, and then he had two more years of training still before he became a full-fledged Auror. But it might be nice to think the git had another side.  
  
 _Delusion, probably_ , Harry reminded himself. He and Hermione had held a short talk before breakfast while Ron, to show how seriously he took the exam, used the time for a final study session. _I know that the bond can unduly influence your emotions, Harry. Be careful with what you say and do around him.  
  
I like your voice better than Granger’s_ , Draco said unexpectedly.  
  
This time, Harry gave an audible snort. The proctor glared at him, but Harry kept his eyes on his parchment and his quill in constant motion, proving what a good little student he was. The older wizard turned away again.  
  
So maybe his life hadn’t become the horrid thing he had feared it would when he fled from Malfoy Manor last night. But their bond hadn’t even been in place for a full day yet, Harry thought, with an odd mixture of hope and trepidation. Give it time, and of course it would be awful.

*

  
Draco was willing, now, to admit that Madam Gloriosa wasn’t just a queen. She was the mistress of hell, or at least the part of it that was known as the Risen Ones’ Revelation Hour, and she had put Draco there for his past crimes. Draco would have apologized and promised never to sin again, if he had the least idea of what he’d _done_ that was evil enough to merit this.  
  
He, Bones, and two male vampires, whom Draco didn’t know, sat in a small circle of chairs in Gloriosa’s office. Gloriosa sat behind her desk, of course, beaming at all of them now and then—safe, no doubt, in the fact that she was the oldest one there and the most formidable. Draco couldn’t imagine that the others were more eager than he was to be there, no matter _what_ expressions they wore.  
  
Each of them had had to state their names—Ryan Johnson and Thomas Gates were the others—and then explain what new lessons about being vampires they had learned in the past week. Those were the “revelations.” And if Madam Gloriosa thought they were too strangely expressed, or that there was too much left unexpressed, she would “guide” the one who had spoken through reshaping their revelation in the language appropriate to V.A.M.P.S.  
  
Bones almost never got that treatment. Gloriosa was having her say about every word out of Draco’s mouth, of course.  
  
“Now, Draco,” Gloriosa said, and turned towards him. Bones had just finished describing how she had realized she no longer missed the sunlight, because the sight of the stars was enough for her—or, rather, “it fulfilled those parts of my vampire nature which would never have found a home in sunlight, showing that I accept reality.” “What else have you learned this week?”  
  
Draco swallowed the temptation to protest that it was Ryan’s or Thomas’s turn, and took a moment to ponder. He’d already talked about his sire and his claws and his relationship with his mother and his being a bonded vampire. He wasn’t sure what there was left to say.  
  
 _Oi, Malfoy! What are you doing? Your discomfort is so strong that it won’t even let me stay in the midst of those stupid dreams about you I keep having.  
  
Welcome to Revelation Hour_ , Draco snapped, too upset to make the conciliatory effort he’d been so proud of when Harry was taking his exam earlier that day. _I sit around in a room with four other vampires and make statements about my life that Madam Gloriosa then runs through the wringer and makes into “something fitting,” which I then have to say. I never even want to_ hear _the words “fitting” and “appropriate” and “responsible” ever again.  
  
This is the group that you told me about?_ Harry said cautiously. _The one that gave you self-help literature?  
  
Yes_. Draco fought the temptation to moan. It wouldn’t do any good. Gloriosa was already starting to look a bit impatient.  
  
 _Ouch. Hermione tried to make me attend a seminar like that once; she claimed I probably had post-traumatic stress disorder from the war and that would make it better. I stood about five minutes of it_. Harry paused a moment. _Can your—I mean, can I help you?_  
  
Draco blinked, and didn’t take the time to question why Harry would _want_ to help him. This wasn’t the time to produce an embarrassed mumble and a retreat. _I have no idea. I’ll ask_.  
  
“Er, Madam Gloriosa,” he said. “Harry wants to talk to the rest of you. Is it all right if he speaks through me?”  
  
For a long moment, everyone else in the room just stared at him. Draco wondered idly if they hadn’t believed him when he’d said the bond was powerful enough to allow him to overhear Harry’s thoughts and emotions at a distance.  
  
“Certainly,” Gloriosa said at last. Her blue eyes were still bright with suspicion, but she was giving little nods, too, as though to convince herself it was a good thing that Draco was taking an interest in his partner. “What revelations about your life does he want to share?” Draco thought he understood her willingness, now that he saw her eyes gleaming like a scalpel. She thought she had a new partner in embarrassing Draco.  
  
 _She doesn’t_ , Harry told him confidently. _Like I said, Hermione made me go to a seminar. I hate the way they talk, but it’s easy to get the trick of it. Tell her that I acknowledge I am powerless before the bond and that both of us have accepted the inevitability of its presence in our lives and are working to see the good inherent in it. They love that kind of thing_.  
  
Draco repeated it, trying not to cringe at the words emerging from his own mouth. Madam Gloriosa opened her eyes very wide and sat up. Draco then tried not to swallow or betray his dread with any other nuance of his expression or his body.  
  
Finally, Madam Gloriosa said, with a kind of helpless smile showing her fangs, “ _Very_ good, Draco. Now it’s your turn, Ryan.”  
  
 _I don’t believe it_ , Draco thought. _That’s the first time I haven’t been scolded in front of them_. He paused, savoring the satisfied feelings that poured from Harry like a medicinal potion for soothing a cough. _How did you know that, though? If you only went to one meeting?_  
  
Harry chuckled, a sound that kindled hunger in Draco’s belly. _Like I said, it’s pretty easy. And Hermione forced a few self-help books on me, too. Never let her meet Madam Gloriosa. It sounds like they would get along all too well._  
  
Draco licked his lips, only half-listening to Ryan’s halting confession of how much pleasure he was learning to take in drinking blood, an act that had disgusted him at first. _Listen, Harry. I—I know it’s only been a day, but would you mind coming to the Manor tomorrow evening? I just—I just want to be near you._  
  
There was a long, tense pause which Draco thought would end with refusal, but Harry only said, his tone alight with mild sparks, _You really shouldn’t try lying to someone who can read your thoughts. I realize you want blood.  
  
Now who’s hiding and lying mind-to-mind_? Draco sent. _Or ignoring the inevitability of the bond and how it impacts our lives? I want_ your _blood, and you know it._  
  
Harry was silent for long moments, and Draco could feel him turning over truths and decisions and emotions in his head like a tongue probing a loose tooth. Madam Gloriosa made the round of the room, soliciting revelations from Thomas and Bones, and then returned to him. Draco sat up straight, preparing to answer without Harry’s help, but Harry said in some distraction, _You know that being undead removes you from the company of normal humans permanently, and you’re learning to accept that and rejoice in what you have_ , which Draco told Gloriosa. Other than a correction on the word “normal,” she let him alone and went back to Ryan.  
  
Finally, Harry said, _I—I reckon that I might as well. It’s true that I’ve been thinking about you for six months, and it can’t be just coincidence that you became a vampire then. Can it?_ he added, as though he had some trouble accepting reality himself.  
  
“I don’t think so,” Draco said.  
  
“What?” Bones asked in annoyance. Ryan, interrupted in his story about something unnecessary and irrelevant to Draco’s life, blinked at him. All of them were staring at him, while Harry laughed in his head. Draco had trouble suppressing a grin, even though Gloriosa was frowning. The sensation of Harry’s laughter was one of the first _pleasant_ things he had felt since he became a vampire. The satiation of hunger was pleasant, too, but only in the way that solid, unremarkable food was.  
  
 _It might be different when I get to suck Harry’s blood_ , Draco thought, and didn’t really care if Harry chose to acknowledge the thought or not. He bowed his head, mumbled an apology, and did his best to attend to Ryan’s boring story.  
  
He was already counting the hours until he saw Harry again, of course, with Harry quarreling with him about the number of minutes. But his presence did make the meeting far more tolerable than it might have been otherwise.  
  
*  
  
Harry couldn’t stop smiling as he prepared to go to Malfoy Manor. He’d done well in his Auror training that day. Though Draco couldn’t reach out over the miles to lend him a vampire’s unnatural strength, he could warn Harry of threats that Harry only saw with his peripheral vision, and whisper that he should turn to the right instead of the left as he might have without due warning. That had impressed his instructors.  
  
And worried Hermione, Harry knew. She had talked to him openly about why he hadn’t wanted to look through the books today for a solution to remove the bond, and Harry didn’t have a good answer.  
  
But the truth was—  
  
 _Of course it’s the truth_ , Draco murmured sleepily in the back of his head. He was just emerging from a nap. One thing he hadn’t told Harry was that he slept deeply when he _did_ sleep, and emerged with all the slowness of a schoolboy who didn’t want to wake up on the last morning of holiday.  
  
The truth was, Harry didn’t mind the bond as much as he thought he would.  
  
He and Draco had already established boundaries, thoughts they politely ignored and emotions they remained silent about. It hadn’t been nearly as hard as Harry had thought it would be. For one thing, Draco had quickly realized that any power imbalance between them could be redressed the next time _he_ had an embarrassing thought or whinged to himself about the unfairness of the universe. And Draco _did_ do a lot of whinging about the unfairness of the universe, and how the Ministry didn’t have to take away his wand, regulations or no regulations, and how he missed his father, and how he wished he could move quietly like his mother, and—  
  
 _Will you stop thinking about that? It’s like being jabbed by needles.  
  
To think about your own faults, of course it is_ , Harry thought tauntingly, and opened the door of the flat, calling a goodbye to Ron and Hermione.  
  
He stopped immediately when he realized that Ginny was standing on the threshold, her hand raised to knock. She stared at him, and Harry wondered how he looked in her eyes. His robes were much too fine for an evening spent at home, or even just if he’d been popping around to the shops in Diagon Alley.  
  
“Harry,” she said, and straightened. The momentary bewilderment on her face was gone. She looked now every inch the young woman who had followed him into the Department of Mysteries and used her wand on the Death Eaters. “I told you that I would wait four days for my answer, remember? Well, it’s the fourth day. I hope you have something more convincing to tell me this time.” She nudged him out of the way with her hand and swept into the flat.  
  
Harry turned around, ignoring Draco’s growl of impatience from the back of his head, and his suggestion, _Tell her that pink is not a good color on redheads, ever, and that since she’s on holiday, she doesn’t have to keep to those ridiculous Gryffindor shades._  
  
“Ginny, now really isn’t a good time,” he said as calmly as he could.  
  
She spun to face him, folding her arms. Harry watched her for a moment, stifling the urge to sigh. Ginny was still in her seventh year at Hogwarts, since her parents had determined that her aborted sixth year didn’t count as proper schooling. She wore a Gryffindor tie and brilliant pink robes. She looked very, very young, Harry thought, considering her from the vantage of having an ageless vampire in his head.  
  
 _That’s not me, that’s all you._  
  
Maybe it was, Harry acknowledged. And maybe it was time to face up to his problems with Ginny with the courage he’d been Sorted into Gryffindor for.  
  
Draco tried to seize on the memory of his Sorting, wanting to know more about what exactly Harry had been _thinking_ to refuse Slytherin, but Harry ignored him as much as possible and said, “Ginny, I just don’t want to date you anymore. I don’t know why. I just—I don’t like you that way anymore. I like you just fine as a sister and a friend. But not as a lover.” He shrugged when her eyes widened, and wished he could say something more comforting. The suggestions Draco kept whispering included scrubbing off her freckles if she ever wanted to attract a man, which wasn’t helpful. “I think—“  
  
“Harry,” Ginny whispered. She sounded so broken that he stopped talking and tried to listen attentively.  
  
 _Weasleys. Such attention-lovers_ , Draco thought.  
  
 _I am amazed that you did not implode with the irony of that statement_ , Harry told him.  
  
 _You know what irony is?_  
  
“Harry,” Ginny said, and this time she seemed to have a little more breath behind the words. “Don’t you remember what happened during the last month of your seventh year?”  
  
Harry’s face burned. He did indeed remember. It was hard to forget the evening he had fallen asleep in the Gryffindor common room and Ginny had surprised him by climbing into his lap and starting to kiss him heatedly. That had been after he had already started losing interest in her—  
  
 _It was June, after I became a vampire_ , Draco said. _That’s a good thing._  
And so he had made awkward excuses, pushed her away, and gone to bed. But he had always known that she wanted to have sex with him that night, and would have if he had stayed on the couch.  
  
“That’s what I want,” Ginny went on. “I know that you feel like you have to say you love me as a sister just so Ron won’t get on you, but I promise, he’s fine with it—“  
  
“This isn’t about Ron, Ginny,” Harry said as firmly as he could. “This is about my feelings for you changing, and my not wanting to date you anymore.”  
  
“But I just want to know why.” Ginny hugged her arms around herself and shivered, as if the chill of the winter’s day had followed her inside.  
  
Harry would have walked over and put his arms around her as little as a week ago. Now he was aware that he was standing in place like an awkward statue. He coughed and shifted.  
  
“Part of it’s magical,” he said at last. She would find out about Draco eventually anyway, and he didn’t want to look as if he’d been lying to avoid her finding out. “Draco Malfoy got turned into a vampire at the beginning of June, did you know that?”  
  
Ginny dropped her arms from around herself and stared at him. “What does that have to do with _us_?” she asked.  
  
Draco growled. Harry winced. He felt as if sharp fangs were nibbling along the edge of his ear when that happened.  
  
“It turned out that Draco—“  
  
“ _Draco_?” Ginny raised her eyebrows the way Hermione had when Harry said he didn’t care about trying to remove the bond anymore.  
  
“Draco is a rather special kind of vampire,” Harry continued, determined to get through all the interruptions and obstacles that she might throw in his path.  
  
 _As if I could ever be anything but._  
  
“He needs someone who’s come back from the dead to share blood with him.” Harry shrugged in response to Ginny’s incredulous stare. “I didn’t make up the rules. It has something to do with the vampire who bit him, I think. Anyway, he’s already tied to me. He can hear my thoughts and sense my emotions—“  
  
“He knows I’m here?” Ginny asked, her voice rising dangerously.  
  
 _Tell her not to shout_ , Draco instructed peremptorily. _She’s hurting my head with all her Weasel shouting, and I’m not even there._  
  
“Yes, he does.” Harry held her eyes, and wished he had been able to break this more gently. Of course, four days ago, he hadn’t even known that something was wrong with him. The obsession with Malfoy would have naturally faded if it weren’t for Draco’s vampirism, he was certain.  
  
 _It would never have started if not for my vampirism_. Draco sighed, a sound that rolled through his head like a gust of morning mist. _Honestly, Harry, someone ought to sit you down and read you a lecture on cause and effect. I’m amazed that Granger never thought to do it._  
  
“Then you can tell him,” Ginny said, “that I’ll find out how he’s been enchanting you, and I’ll make him _stop_.” She nodded fiercely and marched towards the door, her head held high.  
  
Harry was tempted to let her go, but he knew if that happened, then he’d be left with her expectations still clinging to him. Breaking up with Ginny had proven unexpectedly hard to do, but it had to be done.  
  
“Ginny,” he said. She stopped and glanced back at him.  
  
“It’s all right, Harry,” she said kindly. “You’re under his twisted spell right now. I know you’re not yourself, and I forgive you for everything you said—“  
  
“This is the real me,” said Harry, as clearly and persuasively as he could. “The real me—I don’t like you like that anymore, Ginny. I wouldn’t want to date you anymore even if Draco decided he didn’t want my blood tomorrow.”  
  
 _That’s not going to happen. Get over here, won’t you, so I can drink it?_  
  
Ginny closed her eyes. “But, Harry—“  
  
“The reason doesn’t matter. I can’t explain it.” Harry massaged his forehead. “Please, believe me, Ginny. It just won’t happen.”  
  
He glanced up in time to see the truth strike her. Her hand coiled around the edge of the door as though she would wrench it from its hinges.  
  
Then she gave a low sob, yanked the door open, and started running, not even bothering to close the door behind her. Harry darted after her, calling her name, but she had already vanished around the corner.  
  
 _That is not how I wanted that to go_ , he thought, and rubbed his head again.  
  
 _It went perfectly_ , Draco disagreed. _Come to the Manor now. I can’t wait to see you._  
  
*  
  
Draco knew Harry was still brooding when he arrived at the Manor, but he didn’t really care. It wasn’t as though he was about to let Harry run away with the Weasley girl, in any case. If Harry had tried to make things up to her, Draco would have mentally harassed him until he changed his mind and came to the place he was _supposed_ to be.  
  
A few nights—and naps—of dreams and the bond had taken their toll. The moment Harry walked into the study, Draco felt his teeth sharpen. He barely moved his lips out of the way of his lengthening fangs in time.  
  
Harry didn’t seem to notice, though. He just accepted the wine with a distracted nod, and then sat down in the same chair as before, staring into his drink and swirling it now and then. Draco coughed to get his attention, and then, seeing that wouldn’t work, said mentally, _Are you really that broken up about her?_  
  
“Yes,” Harry said aloud, his voice worried. “Ginny’s not the most rational person when she’s upset. Maybe she didn’t go home. Maybe she ran away into the snow somewhere and she’s crying right now. I should have stayed with her, made sure she got back to the Burrow safely—“  
  
“I believe,” Draco said with a drawl, shoving impatience down the bond to show that he would much rather be done with the subject, “that that would be known as ‘leading her on.’ Rather what you seem to have done with her all these months that you’ve been thinking of me and not finding a good reason to break up with her.”  
  
Harry’s shoulders squared, and then he snarled in Draco’s general direction, looking outraged. Down the bond came a medley of emotions so confused that Draco swatted in front of his face before remembering that he didn’t _actually_ stand in the midst of smoke. “I didn’t know about you or about your _condition_ —“  
  
“But you still used all sorts of excuses not to break up with her,” Draco told him. It was dead reckoning; guilt had the tendency to float a large number of similar memories to the top of Harry’s mind, a trait Draco couldn’t help thinking would be useful in the future. “You sat there and smiled like a fool when you could have been telling her that you really didn’t feel like dating her anymore. You avoided hurting her when hurting her would have been the best thing, because then it wouldn’t have made her think I had you under some kind of Imperius—“  
  
“I know perfectly well what I did!” Harry yelled, leaping to his feet. Draco tried not to sway with the sudden dizzying surge of blood he could feel and the fact that Harry’s skin was now all sorts of flushed. “I should have been braver and made up my mind a long time ago! I _know_ that, all right? It’s not as though you have any room to go all on and on about bravery, not when you didn’t have the courage to confront what being a vampire meant until you bonded with me!”  
  
Draco snarled and stalked around the desk. His fangs were aching, and his belly seemed to expand into an echoing emptiness that stretched throughout his body. Somewhat optimistically, maybe, he had told his mother he didn’t need blood tonight, that he would feed from Harry instead. And now he was paying for it. He could feel his rage rising rapidly, in a way that it wouldn’t have if he hadn’t been so thirsty. In the back of his head, where it did absolutely no good, he could hear Madam Gloriosa’s voice telling him that all vampires were vulnerable to anger when they hadn’t fed. “I was facing a more permanent and pressing transformation than you were. Besides, don’t change the subject!” The inside of his head was red with blood and the desire for it. "You’re pining after Weasley like you really did want to date her after all. Will you make up your _mind_? I didn’t think the great Harry Potter, trainee Auror and the Savior of the Wizarding World, was generally this indecisive.”  
  
The bond darkened with the surge of rage that followed. And then Harry’s wand was out again and he was shouting, “ _Incarcerous_!”  
  
Draco flew backwards, but this time he didn’t land on the floor bound with ropes; he landed on his father’s desk instead, and the ropes lashed themselves smoothly around the legs and top. He was neatly spread-eagled, left with a limited amount of room to maneuver. Draco felt a moment’s admiration for the surge of magic—obviously Harry was letting his Auror training benefit him in _some_ things—and a moment’s fleeting envy for what he’d lost when he gave up his wand.  
  
But then Harry was leaning over him, breath going like a bellows with rage, and Draco was reminded rather forcefully of what he’d gained. The blood-hunger made him tremble and arch up, even though he had no chance of breaking _these_ ropes. He whined deep in his throat and opened his mouth in what felt like a rather snake-like motion.  
  
“Harry,” he panted. “ _Please_.”  
  
“You know nothing about the Weasleys,” Harry raged on, ignoring him. Nothing but incoherent emotion came down the bond, which probably explained both Harry’s ignoring his reasonable request for blood and the odd, rambling words that emerged from his mouth. “You don’t know anything about what it was like for me during the war, even if you _do_ have all my memories. Why should I give you blood? You’re nothing but the same selfish bastard you always were, vampirism and self-help programs aside—“  
  
But he’d leaned closer and closer, sneering the words into Draco’s face, and his throat was _right there_.  
  
Draco lifted his head a little higher, and his fangs pierced the soft flesh of Harry Potter’s neck for the first time.  
  
It was—  
  
*  
  
Bliss.  
  
Harry had never thought a vampire bite could be, but then, he hadn’t spent much time thinking about vampire bites at all until he had found out he had to. If someone had asked him, though, he would have described it as gnawing on someone’s neck. Surely that couldn’t be pleasant for the bloke who was being bitten.  
  
But this was.  
  
Harry could feel not only the sharp pain that almost at once faded into a drawing ecstasy, but Draco’s pleasure in the feeding, the sudden vanishing of the emptiness within him. This blood satisfied him more completely and fully than he had ever been satisfied before. Even his mother’s blood didn’t have the sweetness of Harry’s. Animal blood was nothing to it. Draco was never drinking from another cow or chicken again.  
  
The taste of ashes and disappointment washed from Draco’s throat, and was replaced by liquid sunlight. He purred and tried to reach up to Harry, but his hands were still bound down by the rope. He whined softly.  
  
Harry, pulling himself briefly out of the maelstrom of emotions, found laughter emerging. _I think I rather like you this way_ , he thought at Draco. _It makes up for some of the inequalities._  
  
Draco started to reply that he could get out of the ropes at any time, since Harry didn’t know about his claws, but then the blood stole his voice again and melted his body into liquescent compliance. Harry reached out, careful not to disturb the fangs from his throat, and gently squeezed the ends of Draco’s fingers.  
  
The claws popped out. Harry studied them and absently agreed that they were very nice.  
  
He shifted a bit. He was bent in an awkward position, his body half-sprawled across Draco’s but his feet still on the floor. He was starting to think that wasn’t quite satisfactory. The pleasure springing from his throat had inspired him with the wish to feel that good everywhere.  
  
He dug a knee into the desk, froze for a moment with a deep shudder as Draco finished drinking and licked the wound at his neck to clot the blood, and then flopped down on the vampire. The skin that had been cold and rather papery against Harry’s hands was flushed with warmth. The thought that the warmth had come from him only excited Harry further.  
  
He could hardly talk, but with the bond between them, that didn’t matter. He could send his thoughts to Draco even as he leaned down and tangled his tongue around the vampire’s fangs, trying to figure out the safe way to kiss him.  
  
 _I feel really, really good right now.  
  
So do I, so do I, so do I_ , Draco repeated over and over, half-mindless. The blood had settled in his stomach, and he felt as if he were full for the first time in his life.  
  
His mind would have told Harry other things if he’d listened, no doubt as irrelevant, but Harry didn’t really want to hear. He rocked his groin against Draco’s, and gasped at the sensation. None of his dreams had involved Draco tied to a desk, probably because Draco was the source of them and he thought that was too undignified, but the reality was better.  
  
Draco’s eyes flashed open then, and caught Harry’s. The shadows were burned away in them, probably as a result of the blood. He darted his head upwards like a snake’s to catch Harry’s mouth once more, his neck stretching impossibly far, then let his legs fall open and rocked his hips in obscene invitation.  
  
 _It’s not obscene, it’s just open. Not that you would know the difference, being Gryffindor and considering everything that has to do with sex obscene._  
  
“Shut up,” Harry panted, and then realized how stupid that was, helped along by Draco’s enthusiastic agreement in his mind. But he ground himself down, and Draco realized with a gasp that there were other things to be enthusiastic about.  
  
Harry was the one who had to pick up his wand and cast spells that undid the buttons, took off their shoes, and peeled their robes away, since he still wouldn’t let Draco out of the ropes. Draco’s hands flexed, the claws that Harry had uncovered—  
  
 _You didn’t uncover them, I told you about them._  
  
—glinting in the dim firelight. Harry smiled a little. Draco could cut his way out of the bonds if he wanted to, but he didn’t want to. Which meant that he _did_ want this.  
  
 _This is your fantasy, Potter, not mine._  
  
“Not that I knew that, either,” Harry said, and then lowered himself onto Draco’s naked body with a groan. Their cocks were rubbing together now, warmth against warmth. Harry groaned a second time. He had fumbled around with Ginny a bit, but of course it never would have been like this, with so much hardness on both of them. And the fact that he was feeling Draco’s sensations at the same time he felt his own made his body ripple with gooseflesh and every single small hair stand straight up.  
  
 _Can you please not think about Weasley now?_  
  
Harry filled his mind with thoughts of her just to spite Draco, and Draco hissed and showed his fangs. His mouth was ringed with a few faint smears of blood; lack of practice or sheer excitement had kept him from swallowing all of it. Harry shivered again. The warmth had come from him, the blood had come from him, these ropes had come from him.  
  
For the first time in months, he had actually decided something, and his decisions were the ones guiding matters.  
  
It felt so wonderful, he shut his eyes and reached down to take both Draco and himself in hand, because nothing else would come close to conveying that wonder.  
  
*  
  
Draco gasped and arched his back again and again. He suspected that he looked silly doing that, but he couldn’t be sure, because Harry’s eyes were shut.  
  
Draco could not have closed his own eyes for the world. His bloodthirst satisfied, he was drinking Harry in with his gaze. Lean muscles toughened a little with Auror training, glowing skin flushed with health and blood, neck stretched back in a gesture that made Draco writhe a little with the anticipation of his next drink. Harry’s black hair looked to be in its natural habitat for the first time, fittingly wild, brushing against his shoulders with enticing little rasps.  
  
And the only reason that Draco couldn’t touch him was by choice—well, both their choices at the moment. But still.  
  
And then there was the hand and the cock rubbing against him, which felt like four hands and two erections with the flowing of the bond, even though it shouldn’t. Draco shivered, feeling so good he could hardly stand it.  
  
One thing was missing, though.  
  
“Harry,” he said. “Open your eyes.”  
  
Harry’s tattered thoughts assured Draco he was doing this because he wanted to, not because Draco had ordered him to, and then the eyes were open, passionate, aroused green in a way Draco had not even known green _could_ be. Draco arched his back again, a whine exploding from his throat.  
  
“Keep looking at me when you come,” he said.  
  
Harry shuddered, and then went on shuddering. The sensation snaked down and cut into Draco’s spine. He lifted his legs as much as he could, catching and welcoming Harry’s climax, the wet warmth that ran through his hands and across both their bodies, leaving Harry sleepy and sated and sticky and whole.  
  
It was just lucky for him that Draco came in turn at the feel of Harry coming, because he was probably too tired to do a good job of it. Draco shouted, his sharp relief at his filled stomach combining with the normal pleasure to snap every muscle in his body taut for a moment.  
  
And then he was lying on his back, breathing heavily out of habit, Harry draped across his body like the hide of some extinct animal. Draco curled his hands up, sliced through the ropes with his claws, and nearly embraced Harry before he remembered that he should probably retract the claws first. Then he gripped Harry’s shoulders and smoothed them, his hands sliding in the sweat a moment before he began to learn the shape and contours of Harry’s flanks and hips and spine.  
  
“Should untie your legs,” Harry said, voice sleepy.  
  
“We can worry about that later,” Draco replied. “A vampire advantage, you know. We can work our muscles into positions that you humans never can.”  
  
Harry yawned. “Should owl Ginny and explain what happened,” he said, his words now so slurred that Draco only understood what he meant at all because of the bond.  
  
“That can _definitely_ wait until later,” Draco said. “I’m sure she’ll understand that you’ll be too busy having rounds of fantastic sex and feeding me for the rest of your life to ever date her. You must admit that it _is_ a time commitment.”  
  
“Incorri—“ Harry said, and then gave up on the word and fell asleep halfway through.  
  
Draco had read in the latest stack of V.A.M.P.S. literature about the feeling of holding a donor who was also a sexual partner after sex. There had been all sorts of sugary phrases of the kind Madam Gloriosa favored, about how such an experience almost made a vampire’s heart beat again and the like.  
  
Draco didn’t think they were as ridiculous as he had, now.  
  
Just for fun, he funneled his blood, Harry’s blood, through his body and made his heart beat, once.  
  
*  
  
She had very carefully stayed away during the round of noises that the house-elves had come to report to her, but those had stopped some time ago. So now she opened the door of the study and absorbed the sight of Harry Potter, naked and obviously locked in contented sleep, sprawled on top of her son, who looked dead to the world in a good way.  
  
Narcissa nodded in satisfaction. It had taken careful planning and more of the Malfoy fortune than she would have liked to make this come out the way she wanted, but in terms of time, it hadn’t really been all that long.  
  
Really, Draco would get nowhere in life without someone to protect him. She’d seen that in the first few days after the end of the war, even before Lucius fled to Madagascar. Draco was too dependent on her and Lucius, too coddled, and still untutored in the more powerful forms of magic for all that he had spent six years in Hogwarts. And there was no telling what might happen to him when she died.  
  
Narcissa had thought about arranging for a protective wife for him, but the Malfoys had lost too much status. No family with the right kind of daughter would consider marrying her to Draco.  
  
That had left Narcissa with the option she had eventually chosen, of calling in favors and learning as much as she could about vampires. When she had read the Night King’s profile, she had known he was perfect. Draco would have the protection of being a vampire _and_ the protection of a powerful man sharing his every thought and feeling.  
  
Because, really, where else would he find someone to bond with who had come back from death if he did not choose Harry Potter?  
  
Narcissa started to close the door. Draco would protect himself, and be protected, long after she had gone. She had done her duty as a mother.  
  
Then she realized Draco’s eyes were open, and he was watching her. He looked from her to Potter, and blinked, twice, a look of understanding creeping across his face. Narcissa waited, curious. Draco was growing up, but in many ways he was a child even now. He might explode with rage that she had dared to arrange his life for him.  
  
Instead, Draco gave her an incredibly sweet smile and blew her a small kiss before embracing Potter more tightly.  
  
Narcissa smiled and shut the door all the way this time. Draco was safe, she loved her son, and he still loved her. All was well in the world.  
  
 **Finite.**


End file.
